Princeton University Library Special Collections Research Grants
From Princeton University Library:
Princeton University Library Special Collections Research Grants
Applications due by 14 January 2026
The Friends of the Princeton University Library Research Grants Program, funded by the Friends of PUL, is now accepting applications through noon on 14 January 2026. With grants of up to $6,000, plus travel expenses, this competitive grant program offers researchers from around the world access to PUL’s rare and unique collections. Awarded to short-term research projects lasting between two and four weeks, the grants aim to promote scholarly use of the Library’s special collections. Research projects are focused on scholarly use of archives, manuscripts, rare books, and other rare and unique holdings of PUL.
A new grant is available this year: the “Will Noel Innovative Cultural Heritage Research Grant,” specifically for cultural heritage professionals to work with PUL’s Special and Distinctive Collections and the Library IT Digital Studio’s specialized photographic equipment to gain new insights into our collective past.
Find out more and how to apply here. Questions can be directed to pulgrant@princeton.edu.
Call for Papers | Encountering the Decorative Arts, the 18th Century
From the Call for Papers (with proposals in English welcomed) . . .
Les Rencontres des Arts Décoratifs, Le XVIIIe siècle:
Objets, sensibilités, perceptions, réceptions
Musée des Arts décoratifs de Paris, 16 April 2025
Proposals due by 15 December 2025
Porcelain clock, Ladouceur (clockmaker), Manufacture de Chantilly, ca. 1740–50, soft-paste porcelain, polychrome decoration, over glaze, chased and gilded bronze (Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 22757).
Les relations entre les arts, les métiers et l’industrie suscitent aujourd’hui un très grand intérêt. Cours, séminaires et conférences se multiplient, nous incitant à approfondir les connaissances et à débattre autour de questions méthodologiques, théoriques, patrimoniales et techniques. Les Rencontres des Arts Décoratifs entendent contribuer à la structuration de ce champ relativement récent de l’histoire de l’art en donnant une visibilité à la jeune recherche.
L’université, les écoles d’art et d’architecture ainsi que les institutions patrimoniales publiques et privées sont appelées à nourrir ces échanges. Étudiantes et étudiants titulaires d’un Master 1 ou d’un Master 2 (soutenu depuis moins de deux ans), doctorants et jeunes docteurs font découvrir à un large public des collections et des fonds inédits, des créations encore ignorées, des techniques oubliées, des courants esthétiques méconnus.
Les analyses et les discussions sont introduites et animées par des spécialistes reconnus pour l’acuité de leur regard et la singularité de leur approche. Chaque rencontre peut être suivie par des visites d’exposition, de fonds d’archives ou de collections. Le lieu qui nous accueille—le musée des Arts décoratifs de Paris—est hautement emblématique : conçu au milieu du XIXe siècle pour instruire artistes, artisans et ouvriers d’art, diffuser les savoirs et promouvoir la création contemporaine, il est le cadre le plus approprié pour mettre en lumière les dimensions multiples du « faire » qui, encore aujourd’hui, vivifient la production des objets. Réunis à l’occasion de ce rendez‑vous annuel, jeunes chercheurs, enseignants, professionnels et amateurs sont incités à mener ensemble une réflexion historique, critique et prospective, sur les chemins croisés de la conception des formes, de la fabrication des choses et de l’aménagement des espaces de vie.
Du 16 février au 5 juillet 2026, le musée des Arts décoratifs vous invite à plonger au cœur de l’intimité d’une demeure aristocratique du XVIIIe siècle et de ses habitants, maîtres, domestiques et animaux familiers, grâce à une exposition immersive, intitulée Une journée au XVIIIe siècle, chronique d’un hôtel particulier. Dans une mise en scène vivante, sonore, olfactive et haute en couleurs, qui convoquera tous les sens et suivra un fil narratif romanesque, le visiteur sera invité à déambuler de pièce en pièce, comme s’il était un proche, un ami ou un invité privilégié de la famille. Riche de plus de 500 pièces originales issues principalement des collections du musée des Arts décoratifs dans toute leur diversité (boiseries, mobilier, céramique, orfèvrerie, peinture, sculpture, arts graphiques, textiles et mode, jouets, bijoux, verres, papiers peints, etc.), cette exposition se propose de redonner vie à un univers fait de raffinement et de commodité, en s’intéressant à la fois à l’insertion urbaine de l’hôtel, à sa distribution et à son aménagement intérieur, à son fonctionnement, ainsi qu’aux occupations quotidiennes de ses propriétaires. De la toilette du matin aux jeux du soir en élégante compagnie, en passant par la magnificence d’un dîner à la française, les doux accords d’un concert de musique au salon ou les plaisirs piquants de la conversation au gré d’une promenade dans le jardin, celles-ci seront appréhendées sur toute la durée d’une journée, du lever au coucher, chaque pièce ainsi réinventée étant associée à un moment précis.
Comme les Rencontres précédentes, cette cinquième manifestation entend s’inscrire dans une perspective large, ouverte à toutes les approches. Le sujet de l’art de vivre et des arts du décor au XVIIIe siècle, ainsi que de leurs postérités, est envisagé dans ses liens avec l’histoire des sciences et des techniques, l’histoire culturelle, l’histoire des sensibilités, l’histoire matérielle ou encore l’histoire du genre… Les propositions pourront notamment aborder la perception du XVIIIe siècle par le XIXe siècle et par l’époque contemporaine (XXe–XXIe siècles). Amateurs, collections, lectures et interprétations pourront faire l’objet de communications centrées sur la culture matérielle et les arts décoratifs du siècle des Lumières. L’appel est ouvert aux propositions de jeunes chercheurs internationaux. Les propositions d’intervention d’environ 2500–5000 signes (espaces compris), ainsi qu’une bio-bibliographie sont à envoyer avant le 15 décembre 2025 aux adresses suivantes:
jeremie.cerman@gmail.com
rossella.froissart@ephe.psl.eu
ariane.james-sarazin@madparis.fr
anne.perrin-khelissa@univ-tlse2.fr
sebastien.quequet@madparis.fr
estelle.thibault@paris-belleville.archi.fr
celine.trautmann-waller@ephe.psl.eu
amandine.loayza-desfontaines@madparis.fr
Comité scientifique
• Jérémie Cerman, professeur, Université d’Artois, UR 4027 – Centre de Recherche et d’Études Histoire et Sociétés (CREHS)
• Rossella Froissart, directrice d’études, École Pratique des Hautes Études, EA 4116 – Savoirs et pratiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine (SAPRAT)
• Bénédicte Gady, directrice du musée des Arts décoratifs et du musée Nissim de Camondo Ariane
• James‑Sarazin, conservatrice générale du patrimoine, musée des Arts décoratifs
• Anne Perrin, professeure, Université Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès,
UMR 5436 – FRAMESPA (France, Amériques, Espagne. Sociétés, pouvoirs, acteurs)
• Sébastien Quéquet, attaché de conservation, musée des Arts décoratifs
• Estelle Thibault, professeure, École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Belleville, IPRAUS/UMR AUSSER 3329
• Céline Trautmann‑Waller, directrice d’études, École Pratique des Hautes Études, EA 4116 – Savoirs et pratiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine (SAPRAT)
Call for Papers | Arts and Crafts in the Late Ottoman Empire
From ArtHist.net and the Lebanese American University:
Arts and Crafts in the Late Ottoman Empire:
Material Culture in Syria and Beyond, 18th–Early 20th Century
Lebanese American University, Beirut, 22–23 May 2026
Organized by May Farhat and Sarah Sabban
Proposals due by 15 January 2026
Long excluded from the foundational narratives of Islamic art and architecture history, the period from the 18th till the early 20th centuries has attracted growing scholarly attention since the turn of the 21st century (Flood and Necipoğlu 2017; Behrens-Abouseif and Vernoit 2006; Deguilhem and Faroqhi 2005; Vernoit 1997). New interdisciplinary research shaped by the material turn in the humanities and by critical reflections on the Eurocentric framing of modernity—has challenged earlier assumptions that Islamic artistic and architectural practices declined after the 17th century (Graves forthcoming; Trevathan 2025; Rosser-Owen 2020; Hamadeh and Kafescioğlu 2021; Flood 2019, Phillips 2016). Equally, scholars have demonstrated the vitality, adaptability, and creativity of late Ottoman visual and material worlds, revealing their entanglements with global flows of goods, ideas, and technologies, as well as their embeddedness in local practices, knowledge systems, and social lives (Lanzillo 2024; Graves and Seggerman 2022; Volait 2021; Avcıoğlu and Flood 2009). Despite this momentum, Syria (Bilād al-Shām) received far less sustained attention than other Ottoman and Islamic lands such as Anatolia/Turkey, Egypt, or Iran, and has only recently started to gain traction (see Milwright 2018; Abou-Hodeib 2017; Auji 2016; Sheehi 2016; Scharrahs 2013; Weber 2009, and Establet and Pascual 2005).
Building on this new scholarship, the Arts and Crafts conference aims to advance art historical and interdisciplinary research on practices and concepts of material culture in Ottoman lands between the 18th and the early 20th centuries. While inviting contributions on all geographies of the Empire, our call for papers foregrounds late Ottoman Syria as a case through which to expand the analytical and historical horizons of Islamic art and architecture studies and to contribute to broader debates in Ottoman and Arab historiographies of modernity.
Entangled Modernities: Materialities, Epistemes, and Temporalities
Following the methodological program of entangled histories, our endeavor is not limited to chronologically expanding the scope of study but strives for a deeper reflexive commitment to rethinking the relationship between material culture, knowledge, and modernity as an integral part of the history of the Islamic world. We propose to employ “entangled modernities” as a critical site of inquiry into materialities, epistemes, and temporalities at play in the configuration of arts and crafts in the late Ottoman Empire. Integral to this approach is the premise of polyvalent and malleable thinking that can transcend rigid boundaries, undo dichotomies, and illuminate processes of cross-fertilization.
Temporalities
The timespan covered by the conference aligns with a strategic decision to step back and, we hope, productively reframe the usual terms of periodization and pregiven contours of modernity and pre-modernity that preset the objects of study and their coordinates in time. We thereby encourage serious attention to indigenous temporalities embodied or performed in objects, concepts, and material processes that reveal new matrices of continuities, ruptures, and revivals. Indeed, the period under consideration witnessed the gradual integration of the Empire into the global economy and the implementation of a series of reforms, culminating in the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), which signaled profound changes that the state and society had to contend with. These developments raise the question of plural and contested temporalities, which gains further importance in light of increasingly unequal terms of exchange and interaction that characterized Ottoman relations with a fast-industrializing and expansionist Europe.
Epistemes
Our approach emphasizes the mutually constitutive nature of cross-cultural encounters (often between parties of unequal power) and, to the extent possible, contextualizes their components and outcomes in a processual, holistic, and heuristic manner. It equally entails the necessity to historicize categories of knowledge, partly by focusing on webs of meaning formed between emic and etic notions that organized the material world, transformed it, and were transformed by it. The many languages spoken across the Empire fostered unique environments where the modern Western order of knowledge was refracted in many directions and made to reflect local and regional histories. Translation between languages and epistemes undoubtedly depended on emergent, experimental, and contingent forms of knowledge that can instruct the modern historian on the changing conditions and materialities within which they existed.
Materialities
The staggering effects of the Industrial Revolution on the material world and people’s engagement with it cannot be overstated, but they were not all-encompassing, simultaneous, or uniform. Hence, the central aim of this conference on arts and crafts is to reconsider all aspects that constituted, (re)shaped, and represented material culture across this period of more than 200 years including conditions, modes, and tools of production; regional and global circulations of goods and technology transfer; interplay between science, economy, and state; relations between makers, patrons, merchants, and consumers; apprenticeship and other forms of knowledge transmission; skill and artistic traditions between artisanal and mechanical production; modes of valuation, such as taste or aesthetics; how Ottoman economic and legal reforms as well as international agreements negotiated between global pressure and internal stakes.
Overall, we encourage authors to consider the analytical frameworks—temporalities, epistemes, and materialities—that underpin the conference’s critical inquiry into the entangled modernities of Ottoman arts and crafts, in Syria and beyond. We welcome contributions engaging with any of the themes discussed in this call, or those that innovatively expound on them, including but not limited to interdisciplinary research, object-centered studies, case-based micro-histories of concepts, people, and institutions, as well as historiographical questions on sources, archives, conservation discourses, and digital humanities initiatives dealing with material culture.
Submission Guidelines
We invite abstracts of up to 300 words, along with a short biography (max. 100 words), to be sent to MAIA.events@lau.edu.lb by 15 January 2026. Papers may be delivered in English or Arabic. Decisions will be communicated by 1 February 2026. Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication in an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.
s e l e c t e d b i b l i o g r a p h y
Abou-Hodeib, Toufoul. A Taste for Home: The Modern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017.
Auji, Hala. Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Avcıoğlu, Nebahat and Finbarr Barry Flood, eds. “Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century.” Special Issue, Ars Orientalis 39 (2009).
Behrens-Abouseif, Doris and Stephen Vernoit, eds. Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation, Eclecticism. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Deguilhem, Randi and Suraiya Faroqhi, eds. Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005.
Establet, Colette, and Jean-Paul Pascual. Des tissus et des hommes. Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2005.
Flood, Finbarr Barry. Technologies de dévotion dans les arts de l’Islam: Pèlerins, reliques et copies. Paris: Hazan / Musée du Louvre, 2019.
Flood, Finbarr Barry, and Gülru Necipoğlu, eds. A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture. 2 vols. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2017.
Graves, Margaret S. Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics. Princeton University Press, forthcoming.
Graves, Margaret S. and Alex Dika Seggerman, eds. Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2022.
Hamadeh, Shirine and Çiğdem Kafescioğlu, eds. A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2021.
Lanzillo, Amanda. Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. University of California Press, 2024.
Milwright, Marcus. The Arts and Crafts of Syria and Egypt from the Ayyubids to World War I: Collected Essays. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2018.
Phillips, Amanda. Everyday Luxuries. Art and Objects in Ottoman Constantinople, 1600-1800. Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2016.
Rosser-Owen, Mariam, ed. “Middle East Craft.” Special Issue, The Journal of Modern Craft 13, no. 1 (2020).
Scharrahs, Anke. Damascene ῾Ajami Rooms: Forgotten Jewels of Interior Design. London: Archetype, 2013.
Sheehi, Stephen. The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Trevathan, Idries, ed. In Praise of the Artisan: The Enduring Legacy of Islamic Crafts. Medina Publishing Ltd, 2025.
Vernoit, Stephen. Occidentalism: Islamic Art in the 19th Century. London: Nour Foundation, 1997.
Volait, Mercedes. Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850–1890: Intercultural Engagements with Architecture and Craft in the Age of Travel and Reform. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2021.
Weber, Stefan. Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation 1808–1918. 2 vols. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009.
Conference | Architecture and the Literary Imagination, 1350–1750
From ArtHist.net and the American University of Rome:
Architecture and the Literary Imagination, 1350–1750
American University of Rome, 6–8 November 2025
Organized by Fabio Barry and Paul Gwynne
Architecture & the Literary Imagination broadens the repertoire of period voices for understanding pre-modern architecture, beyond the usual theoretical tracts, to foster dialogue between scholars across disciplines, and encourage intermedial perspectives on architecture and literature.
t h u r s d a y , 6 n o v e m b e r
19.00 Introductions
19.15 Keynote
• Luis Javier Cuesta Hernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) — ‘Ephesians will no longer be proud of the Great Temple that Herostratus burned’: Imagined Architecture in Mexico in the 17th Century
f r i d a y , 7 n o v e m b e r
9.30 Medieval
• Elizabeth Pastan (Emory University) — ‘Let stond the wyndow glasid’: Writings about Windows
• Sara Ronzoni (Università di Padova) — ‘La closture et la muraille’: la costruzione della città utopica tra ‘La Cité des dames’ e ‘La città del sole’
• Hannele Hellerstedt (Lincoln College, Oxford) — Divine Inspiration: Imagining Construction in ‘La Cité des dames’
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Interiors
• Klaus Tragbar (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München) — Gli ambienti di Franco Sacchetti
• Caterina Cardamone (Vrije Universiteit, Brussels) — Diplomatic Reports as Sources for the Florentine Imagery of Northern Architectural Culture
• Christian Frost (London Metropolitan University) — Dante and Boccaccio and the Emergence of the Civic Palazzo in Late Medieval Florence
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Vitruvius, Pliny, and Others
• Mikel Marini (Università di Bologna) — ‘Erger cantando machina sublime’: Un’analisi vitruviana dell’architettura ecfrastica in poesia
• Fabio Colonnese (La Sapienza, Roma) — Between Text and Imagination: Reconstructions of the Tomb of Lars Porsenna
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Gardens
• Luke Morgan (Monash University, Melbourne) — ‘Bodies without Souls’: Avatars of Circe in the Early Modern Garden
• Nicholas Temple (London Metropolitan University) — Virgil’s Eclogues and Early 18th-Century Pastoralism on the Janiculum in Rome
17.00 Break
18.00 Keynote
• Níall McLaughlin (Níall McLaughlin Architects, London) — My Portfolio in Poems
Venue: Università Roma Tre, Aula Magna Adalberto Libera, Largo G. B. Marzi 10
s a t u r d a y , 8 n o v e m b e r
9.30 Ruins and Humanists
• Theodoris Koutsogiannis (Art Gallery, Parliament, Athens) — Atene immaginaria cartacea e la tradizione letteraria nella prima età moderna
• Elisa Bacchi (Università di Pisa) — Parola come monumentum, parola al monumentum: leggere e scrivere le rovine dell’Antico nell’Umanesimo italiano
• Susanna de Beer (Royal Dutch Institute, Rome) — The Literary Imagination of Ruins and the Rebuilding of Rome(s)
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Counter Reform
• Nathaniel Hess (Warburg Institute, University of London) — The Church between Two Temples: Poetry and Images in the Works of Marco Girolamo Vida
• Stefano Canciosi (Corpus Christi College, Oxford) — Angelo Rocca’s Approach to Classical Sources in his ‘Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana’
12.30 Lunch
14.00 17th and 18th Centuries
• Giovanni Santucci (Università di Pisa) — Real and Imagined Architecture in Daniel Defoe’s ‘Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain’: National Ornament and the Design of Political Ideals
• Daniela Roberts (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) — The Perception of Medieval Architecture in the Journals and Letters of English Travelers, 1720–1750
• Maicol Cutrì (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) — «quanti poetici concetti potrebbero scaturire da quelle metaforiche pietre?» Spazi architettonici e invenzioni poetiche in Emanuele Tesauro
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Ephemera
• Micaela Antonucci (Università di Bologna) — ‘La storia è il più durevole monumento’: Le architetture effimere nelle cronache delle cerimonie pubbliche a Roma nel primo Cinquecento
• Laura García Sánchez (Universitat de Barcelona) — ‘Apparato funebre dell’anniversario à Gregorio XV celebrato in Bologna à XXIV di luglio M. DC. XXIV dall’ illustrissimo & reverendiss. sig. Cardinal Ludovisi’: Una fonte letteraria al servizio di una architettura effimera
17.00 Break
18.00 Keynote
• Shirine Hamadeh (Koç University, Istanbul) — Poetry, Epigraphy, and the Sensory World of Ottoman Architecture
Conference | Vico, Antiquity, and the Visual Arts
Starting today, from ArtHist.net and the conference programme:
Vico, l’Antiquité et les Arts Visuels
Online and in-person, Besançon, MSHE Ledoux, 3–4 November 2025
On the occasion of the tricentenary of the first edition of La Scienza Nuova (Naples, 1725), this international conference aims to analyze, in an innovative and interdisciplinary way, a central aspect of Giambattista Vico’s work: the importance he attributes to images and visual signs, which he considers the original language, historically prior to the development of spoken language. Although he rarely mentions the arts, Vico’s thought allows us to understand the visual artifact of ancient civilizations as an image-object (factum) that embodies the way in which humans perceive, experience, and interpret the world, thus constituting their reality (the historical verum).
The corpus of his ancient visual sources, as well as the influence of his thought on Antiquity and on the creative imagination of the first “universals of imagination” and “ornamental metaphors” within the disciplines of Visual Studies, have never been studied as such by specialists. The exploration of these themes raises numerous methodological challenges and requires a multidisciplinary approach. The three sessions will address theories and histories of art and collecting, literary theory, iconology, mythology, heraldry and emblem studies, the history and comparative study of law, architecture, archaeology, palaeography, anthropology, museology, semiotics, the geography of perception, as well as the psychology and sociology of art, extending to design and the pedagogy of the imagination. The symposium will be broadcast live.
Contact: anna_eleanor.signorini@umlp.fr
m o n d a y , 3 n o v e m b e r
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85036141522?pwd=LJ4sv9sRfCIsrxMoSxTA1L9Oqlf2mG.1
9.00 Ouverture du colloque – Présentation par Anna E. Signorini
9.10 Session 1 | The Construction of Visual Knowledge from Antiquity to the Age of Vico
• Marcus Jan Bajema (Leyde) — Vico and the Longue Durée of Aegean Art (Vico et la longue durée de l’art égéen)
• Maurizio Harari (Université de Pavie) — Sul potente regno de’ toscani in Italia: architettura più antica, religione più tragica, arte militare più sapiente
• Italo Iasiello (Université de Naples Federico II) — Il contesto antiquario di Giambattista Vico: Napoli e l’Antichità nel primo Settecento
• Daniel Orrells (King’s College) — Vico and the Visual World of 18th-Century Antiquarianism
12.00 Déjeuner
14.30 Session 1 | The Construction of Visual Knowledge from Antiquity to the Age of Vico, continued
• Loredana Lorizzo (Université G. D’Annunzio de Chieti-Pescara) — Nella biblioteca di Giuseppe Valletta: Vico e la letteratura artistica
14.50 Session 2 | Semiotics, Law, Pedagogy, Design: Vico’s Iconic Thought
• Davide Luglio (Sorbonne) — La Scienza Nuova et la sémiotique figurale de G.B. Vico
• Osvaldo Sacchi (Université de la Campanie Luigi Vanvitelli) — Gli ‘universali fantastici’ di Vico e la ‘grande bellezza’ del diritto romano
• Donald Kunze (Pennsylvania State University) — Representing Nothing: Vico’s Induction and Inversion
• Marco Dallari (Bologne) — Disegno infantile e rappresentazione del mondo e di sè alla luce della théorie vichiana
• Oliver Reichenstein (Information Architects, Zurich) — (Inter)facing the Truth: Maker’s Knowledge in Human Centered Design
t u e s d a y , 4 n o v e m b e r
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89987641547?pwd=r3qY5x1duD4qhYqIU77eMJCctqv2a3.1
9.00 Dora d’Auria (UMLP Besançon, ISTA) — La connaissance des antiquités du Cilento à l’époque de Vico
9.20 Session 3 | Modern and Contemporary Receptions of Vico in the Visual Arts and Visual Studies
• Silvia Davoli (Oxford et Strawberry Hill House, Londres) — Vico and Antiquarian Collecting in Milan during the 19th Century
• Paolo Heritier (Université de Turin) — Vico, les emblèmes et les Legal Visual Studies
• Frances S. Connelly (Université du Missouri-Kansas City) — Reimagining Culture: Vico’s Poetic Monsters in Contemporary Art
• Isabela Gaglianone (Université de São Paulo) — Vico et le regard philologique d’Aby Warburg
• Anna Eleanor Signorini (UMLP Besançon, ISTA) — Vico vu par les critiques d’art du XXe siècle
Exhibition | Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
Installation view of the exhibition Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: More Than Character Heads
(Wien: Lower Belvedere; photo by Johannes Stoll).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the press release for the exhibition:
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: More Than Character Heads
Lower Belvedere, Vienna, 31 October 2025 — 6 April 2026
Curated by Katharina Lovecky and Georg Lechner, with Kati Renner
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) is presented as an artist at a cultural and political turning point in history. His portraits of members of the court and the aristocracy, scholars, scientists, and writers offer an insight into the social structures of his day. Furthermore, his now iconic ‘Character Heads’, which he started working on in 1770, are also interpreted as a phenomenon of their time. The exhibition compares Messerschmidt’s sculptures to the work of other artists with whom he has often been associated with the aim of critically questioning possible parallels and influences.
General Director Stella Rollig: “No other artist from the Belvedere’s collection holds equal fascination for both the public and artists in the same way as Messerschmidt. Was he a genius or an outsider? Many identities have been attributed to him through history, some of which are pure fiction. This exhibition considers these various interpretations from today’s perspective and shows the full scope of his work in a way that has not been seen for a long time.”
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt is one of the pivotal artists in the Belvedere’s collection. The museum holds the world’s largest selection of works by this sculptor and has showcased these in its permanent displays for over a century. From around 1769 Messerschmidt’s portraits reflected a new image of humanity, permeated with the ideas of the Enlightenment, with emphasis moving away from Baroque pomp to place a greater focus on the individual. Moreover, the patrons and personalities he portrayed—such as Maria Theresia Felicitas von Savoy-Carignan, physicians Gerard van Swieten and Franz Anton Mesmer, and art writer Franz Christoph von Scheyb—shed light on the cultural, political, and intellectual world of the eighteenth century.
Although Messerschmidt’s ‘Character Heads’ are now famous, they remain a puzzle to this day. The psychopathological interpretation—extremely popular since the twentieth century—is a narrow lens through which to view these objects and ignores the fact that the sculptor was responding to the profound social and intellectual changes of the eighteenth century in his work. The exhibition aims to situate Messerschmidt’s ‘Character Heads’ in the context of that period’s preoccupation with facial expressions and to read them as a phenomenon of their time. Comparisons with works by artists such as Joseph Ducreux, William Hogarth, and Jakob Matthias Schmutzer confirm that the fascination with the face (and its aberrations) was by no means unique in this age.
“Despite the fact that Messerschmidt’s intentions remain unclear, we can identify key intellectual trends from the eighteenth century in his ‘Character Heads’—even now they still inspire direct responses from viewers. Their frontality and expressive power are classic examples of the departure from academic neoclassicism,” said curator Katharina Lovecky.
Curator Georg Lechner added: “Messerschmidt’s ‘Character Heads’ have had an eventful exhibition history reflecting their varied reception—from amusing curiosity to important works of art history. After the Baroque Museum was opened in the Lower Belvedere, Messerschmidt’s sculptures became established museum pieces and were permanently incorporated into art-historical debate.”
Georg Lechner, Katharina Lovecky, and Stella Rollig, eds., Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: Mehr als Charakterköpfe / More than Character Heads (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2025), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-3753309064, €35. Bilingual catalogue.
Call for Articles | Markers, Journal for Gravestone Studies
From the Association for Gravestone Studies:
Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies, 2027 Issue
Submissions due by 1 January 2026
We are currently seeking article submissions for the 2027 issue of Markers, the scholarly journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. The subject matter of Markers is defined as the analytical study of gravemarkers, monuments, tombs, and cemeteries of all types and encompassing all historical periods and geographical regions. Markers is of interest to scholars in anthropology, historical archaeology, art and architectural history, ethnic studies, material culture studies, American studies, folklore and popular culture studies, linguistics, literature, rhetoric, local and regional history, cultural geography, sociology, and related fields. Articles submitted for publication in Markers should be scholarly, analytical, and interpretive, not merely descriptive or entertaining, and should be written in a style appropriate to both a wide academic audience and an audience of interested non-academics.
Authors are encouraged to consult the “Notes for Contributors to Markers and Markers Style Guide.” Submissions for 2027 should be sent to Editor Elisabeth Roark, Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Chatham University, at roark@chatham.edu, before 1 January 2026.
Exhibition | Mécaniques d’art Présentation
Jean Rousseau, Skull-shaped Watch, Geneva, mid-17th century, silver and gilt brass (Paris: Musée du Louvre). The engraved decoration depicts Adam and Eve and the Resurrection of Christ, with text from St. Paul.
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Mécaniques d’art Présentation
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 17 September — 12 November 2025
The Louvre has opened an exhibition that shines a spotlight on one of its most fascinating yet lesser-known treasures: the mechanical arts. With works spanning more than two millennia—from ancient Egyptian water clocks to contemporary horological masterpieces—the exhibition reveals humanity’s enduring desire to capture, measure, and even control time. Visitors enter a world where science, craftsmanship, and artistry intersect.
Claude Siméon Passemant, Jean-Baptiste Lepaute, and Jean-Joseph Lepaute, Clock known as The Creation of the World (La Création du Monde), 1754, wood, iron, patinated copper alloy, silver-plated and gilded copper, and glass.
Among the earliest pieces is a fragment of an Egyptian clepsydra, a water clock from the Ptolemaic period, which once measured the hours of the night by dripping water drop by drop. Fast forward to 10th-century Córdoba, and a magnificent fragment of a peacock automaton—possibly designed to dazzle with moving parts—demonstrates the ingenuity of Islamic artisans. The journey continues through Renaissance and Baroque Europe. A spherical watch signed by Jacques de La Garde in 1551, the oldest known signed French watch, showcases the refinement of early horology. Visitors can also admire a skull-shaped ‘memento mori’ watch from Geneva, a striking reminder of time’s fleeting nature. And in the grandeur of 18th-century Paris, the celebrated Creation of the World clock, presented to Louis XV in 1754, takes center stage, complete with rotating Earth, lunar phases, and a miniature planetarium.
This celebration of historic craftsmanship is paired with an exceptional loan from Swiss maison Vacheron Constantin. Their creation La Quête du Temps (The Quest for Time), unveiled for the house’s 270th anniversary, is a clock-automaton that brings the tradition of horology into the 21st century. With 23 complications—including an automaton astronomer performing 144 gestures—it unites Renaissance humanism with modern precision engineering. Beyond telling the hour, the piece offers a poetic vision of cosmic and astronomical phenomena.
The dialogue between centuries underscores how the fascination with time has always inspired technical brilliance and artistic imagination. Whether through polyhedral dials of the 17th century, armillary spheres perched on the shoulders of Atlas, or contemporary automata, the exhibition shows that the quest to master time is as much about beauty as it is about function.
More information is available here»
Exhibition | Wright of Derby: From the Shadows
Detail from Joseph Wright, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768
(London: The National Gallery)
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows
National Gallery, London, 7 November 2025 — 10 May 2026
Derby Museums, 2026
In the autumn of 2025, the National Gallery will present Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, the first exhibition dedicated to Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–1797) at the National Gallery, and the first exhibition to focus on his ‘candlelight’ series. The exhibition is organised in partnership with Derby Museums where it will travel in 2026.
Following on from recent exhibitions such as Turner on Tour (2022) and Discover Constable & The Hay Wain (2024), this exhibition will put the spotlight on a well-known British artist in the National Gallery Collection whose work has come to symbolise an era. Traditionally, Wright of Derby has been viewed as a figurehead of the Enlightenment, a period of scientific, philosophical and artistic development in the 17th and 18th century. Challenging this conventional view, the exhibition contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the artist, portraying him not merely as a ‘painter of light’ but as one who deliberately explores the night-time to engage with deeper and more sombre themes, including death, melancholy, morality, scepticism, and the sublime.
This exhibition will focus on Joseph Wright’s career between 1765 and 1773, during which time he made a series of candlelit scenes. We will show a number of masterpieces from this period including Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight (1765, private collection), A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery in which a lamp is put in place of the Sun (1766, Derby Museum and Art Gallery), and the National Gallery’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768). This marks the first time in 35 years that all these works will be brought together. In these ‘candlelight’ paintings, Wright of Derby shows thrilling moments, not just of discovery but of shared learning. His dramatic depictions of natural and artificial light link his work back to the artistic traditions of the Renaissance and artists such as Caravaggio, whose strong light and deep shadows were rarely employed in British art before the mid-18th century.
Yet Wright of Derby also engaged with very contemporary questions around the act of observation, spectacle and education raised by philosophers of the Enlightenment. In his masterpiece An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, a travelling lecturer shows a well-established experiment to a family audience whose reactions range from wonder to horror. In The Orrery, the first of his paintings on a ‘scientific’ subject, a philosopher presents a lecture on astronomy using a clockwork model of the solar system as the centrepiece, the sun replaced by an oil lamp. In Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, one artist holds up a drawing of the central sculpture for critical assessment. These works explore moral ambiguity in acts of looking, as well as the intellectual influence of ‘high’ art.
Wright ‘of Derby’ was working at a turning point for art viewing in the 18th century, when the public display of art and the instigation of annual contemporary art exhibitions were being promoted. The Air Pump was completed the same year as the creation of the Royal Academy and was intended to be accessible to a broad public (though it was displayed at the Society of Artists). Mezzotint prints of Wright’s works, which played a key role in establishing his international reputation, will also be on display. These luxury prints highlight how the artist took full advantage of popular reproduction techniques of his time to expand his reputation both at home and abroad.
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows will show over twenty works, including other paintings, works on paper, and objects that explore both Wright of Derby’s artistic practice and the historic context of scientific and artistic development in which they were made. Seventeen artworks will be coming from Derby Museums, who hold the world’s largest collection of Wright’s work. In 2026, Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, will travel to Derby Museum and Art Gallery, bringing two of Wright’s most famous works, The Air Pump and The Orrery, back to his hometown for the first time in 80 years.
Christine Riding and Jon King, Wright of Derby: From the Shadows (London, National Gallery London, 2025), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-1857097467, £20.
New Book | The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England
From Cambridge UP, with an online book launch, together with a speed-pitching workshop, scheduled for Monday (see below) . . .
Adam James Smith, Rachel Stenner, and Kaley Kramer, eds., The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), 124 pages, ISBN: 978-1009629454, $18.
This collection profiles understudied figures in the book and print trades of the eighteenth century. With an explicit focus on intervening in the critical history of the trades, this volume profiles seven women and three men, emphasising the broad range of material, cultural, and ideological work these people undertook. It offers a biographical introduction to each figure, placing them in their social, professional, and institutional settings. The collection considers varied print trade roles including that of the printer, publisher, business-owner, and bookseller, as well as several specific trade networks and numerous textual forms. The biographies draw on extensive new archival research, with details of key sources for further study on each figure. Chronologically organised, this Element offers a primer both on individual figures and on the tribulations and innovations of the print trade in the century of national and print expansion.
c o n t e n t s
Preface
1 Introduction — Adam James Smith, Rachel Stenner, and Kaley Kramer
2 Elizabeth Nutt: Print Trade Matriarch (1666–1746) — Helen Williams
3 John Nicholson and the Auctioning of Copyright (d.1717) — Jacob Baxter
4 Catherine Sanger: Publisher in Bartholomew Close (1687–1716) — Kate Ozment
5 John White Junior: Printer in the North (1689–1769) — Sarah Griffin
6 Selling the Enlightenment: Mary Cooper and Print Culture (1707–1761) — Lisa Maruca
7 The ‘Indefatigable’ Ann Ward: Printer in York (1715/6–1789) — Kaley Kramer
8 Anne Fisher (1719–1778): Not Simply a Printer’s Wife — Barbara Crosbie
9 Sold at the Vestry: John Rippon (1751–1836) and the Hymnbook Trade — Dominic Bridge
10 Diversity in the Book Trades: Ann Ireland (1751–1843) of Leicester — John Hinks
11 ‘Laugh when you must, be candid when you can’: The Concealed Resistance of the Radical Printer Winifred Gales (1761–1839) — Adam James Smith
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From Eventbrite:
The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England
Book Launch and Early Career Researcher Speed-pitching Workshop
Online, Monday, 3 November, 6.30pm GMT
All welcome! Please register by 2 November.
Join the Centre for Print Culture at the University of Sussex to celebrate the publication of this volume, the follow-on to The People of Print: Seventeenth-Century England, with an evening of lively talks and discussion. The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England profiles understudied figures in the book and print trades, featuring new research and critical perspectives on this fascinating and rich cultural field. We will be joined by Dr Barbara Crosbie (Durham University), Dr Jacob Baxter (St Andrews), and Dr Lisa Maruca (Wayne State, Professor Emerita), who will discuss their research for the latest collection.
Following the launch, there will be a Speed-pitching workshop (7.30–8.15pm GMT) for early career researchers studying topics in the histories of the book, print, and publishing trades. Come with an idea you can explain in 3 minutes, and we will pair you with one of our publishing panel of journal, series, and book editors for feedback:
• Dr Helen Williams, The Printing Historical Society
• Dr Kaley Kramer and Dr Adam James Smith, editors The People of Print
• Professor Samantha Rayner, Commissioning Editor of Cambridge Elements, Publishing and Book Culture
• Dr Rachel Stenner, editor of Publishing History journal and The People of Print series
Enfilade 
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